Awami Workers’ Party: Big money, influence rig elections

AWP president says he had filed two petitions regarding electoral reforms and land reforms as part of his fight.

LAHORE: “The elections are being unfairly swayed by big money and the influential,” Awami Workers’ Party (AWP) President Abid Hassan Minto said on Saturday. He was addressing a seminar organised to discuss electoral and land reforms in Pakistan. He said he had filed two petitions regarding electoral reforms and land reforms as part of his fight against the rote of “big money” in the electoral politics. Anjuman Mazareen General Secretary (Punjab) Mehr Abdul Sattar said that big landowners in the parliament and the government only worked for their class interest. As long as capitalists and feudal dominated the politics, he said, a serious debate about reforms could not begin. Jamila Begum, who has been leading a tenants’ campaign for rights in Dera Saigol, said that ‘the peasants were still treated like slaves.” Prof Jamil Omar of the AWP said that 20,000 big landowners had as much land as small farmers.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2013.